Debtors Control Account

System
System Posts: 100,534 🤖 Admin 🤖
edited June 18 in AAT student discussion
Hi all,<BR><BR>Im currently studying from home hoping to be ready for the December DFS exam.<BR><BR>Ive not done any AAT for a while and i've come across something which has confused me, id really appreciate someone clarifying it. <BR><BR>In a question in the book, it says that the debtors control account doesnt match the individual debtors account. It gives you the figures for the control account and the total for the individual ones, but im confused.<BR><BR>I thought the control account would just be a total of all individual ones, so how can they be different? And which one should i be changing?<BR><BR>Hope im making sense!<BR><BR>Thanks

Comments

  • System
    System Posts: 100,534 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Debtors Control Account

    I am assuming (well guessing really) that there has been a mathematical error in one or other of the accounts - work out the difference between the two accounts and if they divide evenly by 9 then there is a typo - 1234 instead of 1324 say - You would probably need to add up all the individual entries to try and see where the error is.<BR><BR>Hope this helps - but as you say it is confusing cos they should be the same.<BR><BR>Claudia<BR>
  • System
    System Posts: 100,534 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Debtors Control Account

    If you did bookkeeping on Sage, they would be the same, because the control account is automatically updated when you post invoices into the sales ledger.<BR><BR>However, AAT is still in the Dark Ages, and assumes everyone maintains their books on paper! So, in this world, you would have one book for the individual debtor accounts and another book representing your nominal ledger. <BR><BR>The control account would not agree to the individual debtor accounts for the following reasons:<BR><BR>As Claudia says, the bookkeeper does a transposition error in one of the books.<BR>The bookkeeper puts in an invoice into one book and then goes to make a cup of tea and forgets to update the other book.<BR>The bookkeeper puts an invoice into the individual account and then enters that invoice into purchases in the nominal ledger instead of sales.<BR><BR>And other such daft reasons!<BR>Hope that helps <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif" border="0">
  • System
    System Posts: 100,534 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Debtors Control Account

    thanks (both of you) that helps.<BR><BR>We dont actually use control accounts where i work, could you run though the ledger entries with me? i.e. for a purchase? <BR><BR>Here we just debit purchases and credit the individual creditor account.<BR><BR>How does it work? Thanks again :-)
  • System
    System Posts: 100,534 🤖 Admin 🤖
    Debtors Control Account

    I've had a lots of accounts systems which have crashed during batch audit updates or similar and they've only posted one side of the entry so it always helps to understand what should have happened to the other side !!

Categories

Privacy Policy